Colorado needs to hone in on its strengths to get a win over the Jets on Tuesday night.
Resilience is important for the Colorado Avalanche to rebound from a Game 1 loss. The Avs showed the ability to do so in the regular season but there is no margin for error in the playoffs.
"Seven goals against, so obviously there's something we can clean up in front of Georgie (goaltender Alexandar Georgiev) try to help him a little bit more," Mikko Rantanen said after morning skate on Tuesday. "Just the little mistakes was costing us in high percentage — so try to clean up those and keep the same way on the attack."
Postseason hockey is on a different level that requires the team to hold itself to a higher standard. Nathan MacKinnon, a prominent leader on the team, said there is no quit in his fellow teammates.
"You know the best part about being in the sport we are is we get to be resilient, we get to compete and you know we have a bunch of guys in this room that love to compete no matter the circumstances," MacKinnon said. "No matter how the series plays out we're not going to quit. That's definitely a sign of any winning team is resilience and when we won we had a ton of that and I see a lot of the same traits in this team."
The 2023-24 team has the same core group, but much has changed since the 2022 Stanley Cup-winning team. Confidence and chemistry were keys to that team's success and will be for this one as well — even without Gabriel Landeskog in the lineup. He traveled with the team to continue his role as the captain and help morale.
Head coach Jared Bednar said this was going to be a tough series but was not basing that on the results of the three games played against the Jets in the regular season.
"For me, it was just more that we hadn't played the Jets the way we can play since the start of the year. Every opponent there's going to be like some sort of feeling out process," Bednar said. "You want to go and play your game to the best of your ability and see where it takes you and then make adjustments along the way after that. I thought we did that the other night to a certain extent — we'll have to be better than we were the other night to win but I think there's a lot of positive signs and things we can take out of that game to say just keep doing some of the things we were doing and fix some others."
While goaltending played a part in the 7-6 loss on Sunday, Bednar said he is starting Georgiev on Tuesday night. Backup Justus Annunen is still out sick and the organization recalled Ivan Prosvetov to back up Georgiev for Game 2.
Projected lineup
Zach Parise — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Artturi Lehkonen — Casey Mittelstadt — Valeri Nichushkin
Miles Wood — Ross Colton — Joel Kiviranta
Andrew Cogliano — Yakov Trenin — Brandon Duhaime
Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Samuel Girard — Josh Manson
Jack Johnson — Sean Walker
Alexandar Georgiev
Ivan Prosvetov
The puck drops at 7:30 p.m. MT.
Recent Colorado Avalanche articles
Avalanche place gritty forward on waivers
Stanley Cup Playoffs Game 1: Avalanche goaltending questionable in 7-6 loss
'It’s about playing your best hockey, at the right time': How Avalanche have prepared to face Jets